ms all the time and the
automobiles."

"Ach, I look both ways still before I start over. Granny Hogendobler
said she'll get out early."

"So. What did she have to say?"

"Ach, lots. She showed me her flowers. Ain't it too bad, now, that her
little girl died and her boy went away?"

"Well, she spoiled that boy. He grew up to be not much account if he
stays away just because he and his pop had words once."

"But he'll come back some day. Granny knows he will." The child echoed
the old mother's confidence.

"Not much chance of that," said Aunt Maria with her usual decisiveness.
"When a man goes off like that he mostly always stays off. He writes to
her she says and I guess she's just as good off with that as if he come
home to live. She's lived this long without him."

"But," argued Phoebe, the maternal in her over-sweeping all else, "he's
her boy and she wants him back!"

"Ach," the aunt said impatiently, "you talk too much. Were you at the
store?"

"Yes. I got the thread and ordered the sugar and counted the change and
there was nothing in the post-office for us."

"Did you enjoy your trip to town?" asked the father.

"Yes--but----"

"But what?" demanded Aunt Maria. "Did you break anything in the store
now?"

"No. I just got mad. It was this way"--and she told the story of her
pink rose.

Maria Metz frowned. "David Eby should leave his mom's roses on the
stalks where they belong. Anyhow, I guess you did look funny if you
poked your nose in it like you do still here."

"But she had no business to laugh at me, had she, pop?"

"You're too touchy," he said kindly. "But did you say the lady was on
Mollie Stern's porch?"

"Yes."

"Then I guess it was her cousin from Philadelphia, the one that was
elected to teach the school on the hill for next winter."

"Oh, pop, not our school?"

"Yes. Anyhow, her cousin was elected yesterday to teach your school. It
seems she wanted to teach in the country and Mollie's pop is friends
with a lot of our directors and they voted her in."

"I ain't goin' to school then!" Phoebe almost sobbed. "I don't like her,
I don't want to go to her school; she laughed at me."

"Come, come," the father laid his hands on her head and spoke gently yet
in a tone that she respected. "You mustn't get worked up over it. She's
a nice young lady, and it will be something new to have a teacher from
Philadelphia. Anyhow, it's a long ways yet till school begins."

"I'm glad it is."

"